Friday, August 22, 2014

Residents
and businesses in Murphy are scheduled for yet another bonus watering
day during the week of Aug. 25 as the City temporarily suspends the
twice-monthly watering schedule, says City Manager James Fisher.

... “Allowing the
additional day gives us a chance to keep the water in our system moving,
and that’s important for a number of reasons.”Residents with
addresses ending in an odd number may water on Monday, Aug. 25, a day
that is not on the schedule for them. And, residents with addresses
ending in an even number may water on Wednesday, Aug. 27, a day that
would normally not be one during which watering was allowed.

“These bonus
days do not negate the need to maintain the proper watering times,”
added Fisher. Watering is prohibited after 10 a.m. or before 6 p.m. to
avoid the hottest part of the day during which evaporation is most
likely. Stage 3 seasonal restrictions, which limit watering to
twice a month, are in place until Oct. 31. These restrictions apply to
all automatic sprinkler systems.

While water conservation is
critically important, Fisher says that the effects of using less water
results in placing the City of Murphy in the unusual position of having
water linger in the storage system longer than normal. “We need to
move the water in our storage system to maintain the system at its peak
level of efficiency,” he said. “The residents and businesses in Murphy
have done what we’ve asked, and that has put us in this position. We’re
actually pleased to give something back for their support of our water
conservation efforts.”

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

We got a cool little postcard in May... I don't think I was one for the end of summer. Since we are in these restrictions apparently until Noah builds another ark, here's the city's guide to keeping you from getting a fine!

Murphy Fine water use water restrictions City of Murphy code water 75094 restrictions

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Steve Brown of the Dallas Morning News, reports what we all suspected. The market in the Dallas area is healthy and still inclined toward the seller's advantage. So it's a great time to sell and the advantage you gain in selling will well equip you for being an aggressive and competitive buyer.

Keep in mind, the new home building industry is an easy to read thermometer for the overall housing industry. When there is an oversupply of new homes, there is likely the same condition in pre-owned homes and vice versa. What this all means to you and me is that our jobs are safe, our incomes are steady, our home values are on the rise, and we can sell your house quick as ever. Here's Brown's article:

Dallas-area homebuilders can’t keep up with demand for new houses North Texas homebuilders couldn’t keep up with buyers in the final
months of 2013, as new home sales rose to the highest point in more than
four years.

Builders sold 5,218 new homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the fourth quarter. But starts for the three months came in at only 4,514 houses — the lowest quarterly production in almost two years.

Fourth-quarter
starts were held in check by December’s weather and construction
constraints including tight labor and shortages of building sites, said
Ted Wilson, principal with Dallas-based housing analyst Residential
Strategies. “They have been ready to pour foundations, but the
weather has not been good enough,” Wilson said. “It will push some
business that normally would have come in the fourth quarter into the
first quarter.”

Finding enough construction workers to meet
homebuilding demand won’t be as easy as waiting for a change in the
weather. Labor constraints have been haunting the local housing market
since 2012. “When there is so much talk nationally about a need
for jobs in the U.S., it is ironic that the D-FW new home industry is
facing a labor shortage,” Wilson said. “The housing downturn
wiped out a lot of companies that served the housing industry, and it is
taking a long time to bring workers back, especially when there are
vibrant industries such as oil and gas and trucking competing for many
of these same workers.“There are shortages of bricklayers,
framers, you name it,” he said. “Homebuilders are also having to compete
for workers with other parts of the real estate market.”Local
construction labor shortages have increased the average time it takes to
build a house in North Texas by as much as a third.

“Typically it takes 120 days to get a house built,” Wilson said. “That’s up by 40 days. “There is such a backlog they may sell a house and not be able to start it for three months.”Only
about 2,800 finished, vacant new houses were on the market in the D-FW
area at the end of the year. That’s less than a two-month supply,
Residential Strategies found. D-FW home starts in 2013 were almost 60 percent ahead of where they were at the bottom of the recession in mid 2009.

But
with 20,778 home starts in all of 2013, builders have a long way to go
before the market is back to where it was in 2006 when almost 50,000 new
houses were started in the area.

Dallas - Fort Worth Grows and Grows!

Bloggers I like & other Off Topic Links

Real Estate Agents that Don't Suck... (a rant)

REALTOR Ethics Codes prohibit me from posting who the terrible 80% are and why they are a scourge to our industry. But no one says I can't tell you who the good ones are!

J.T. Oden II, JTOden Realty

Jennifer Davis

Joe Boggs, Integrity First Mortgage

Jessica Bierstedt

Nancy Baldwin

Lori "CHICK" Miller

Angela Katai

Cori Sharp, KW

Donna McDonald, Ebby

Nancy White, Remax

Jason Pardue, KW

Linda Chady Chase, KW

There are some really lousy agents out there and lousy loan officers too. A client of mine once told me that he read an article that said 80% of licensees were awful. I agree with that, unfortunately. There are even whole brokerages devoted to sub-standard work. The REALTOR code of ethics prohibits me from giving you a list of all the lousy ones, much less telling you why they are so poor. Just because they are not listed doesn't mean they are lousy... but if they aren't on this list, assume the worst... just to be safe.